Moments before her son races in Tuesday's Dakota Ridge Invitational, Sandy Winn is "very nervous." Zacc Winn was in Children's Hospital Colorado last week because of a liver disease, and he has been out of the hospital only five days. Sandy knows Zacc is going to push himself hard, and he is going to be in a lot of pain.

"Wherever he places today, at least he's out there running," Sandy says. "He took one day off after being in the hospital. That was his definition of 'Take it easy.' "

The object of cross country racing is to push limits and endure pain. Every runner who runs an honest race is going to hurt.

But Brush runner Zacc Winn took that to a level few runners experience 11 days ago, running through stabbing pain while abdominal organs ripped apart. Yet the lanky sophomore, who will need a liver transplant someday, managed to finish No. 3 for his team that day in the Brush Invitational.

Then he collapsed.

"I was down for, like, five minutes," Winn recalled last week. "I would have stayed down, but my teammates had to pick me up and carry me off. They put me under the bleachers in the shade. I couldn't stand up, and my stomach hurt so bad. I was too weak to stand."

Too weak to stand after the race, but determined not to quit before he crossed that finish line.

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"I've made it a goal to never walk or quit a race," Winn said. "Last year in track I had an episode like that in the 2-mile. Everyone lapped me like two or three times, but I just had to keep going. When I finished, I was immediately hauled off to the hospital."

Winn has a chronic liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis, which causes his liver to swell. Recently his liver attached itself to his stomach wall, and the pain he felt in the Brush meet was caused by those adhesions tearing.

"When I gave it all I could, it finally just tore off and split, so there was a lot of internal bleeding," Winn said. "They said it was like ripping a scab off inside your stomach."

Winn was admitted to Children's Colorado the next day and spent four nights there. He went back to Brush on Thursday and was on the team bus Friday for a two-hour trip to Littleton just so he could cheer for his teammates in the Dave Sanders Invitational.

In the middle stages of Tuesday's race, Zacc is struggling, running well below his goal pace of breaking 20 minutes, but he's determined to hold on. Then as the finish line approaches, he kicks furiously. He's a fighter.

"When he doesn't talk, I know he's hurting," Sandy says after Zacc finishes in 22:37. "But he's bound to be hurting, to run that hard (at the end). He's disappointed in his time because he's hard on himself."

Zacc's disease hardens the liver and closes down the bile ducts. The only cure is a transplant, but Zacc will have to wait for that.

"He needs to be a lot sicker, even though he is sick, before he'll get that transplant," Sandy said. "Some people who have it, they go downhill really fast. Some, the medication kind of slows down the process. That's the frustrating thing, because you see him get sick, then he'll bounce back. Then he'll get sick again."

Zacc has big dreams. He wants to run cross country and play basketball in college. He wants to study zoology and open a pet store. He wants to help his team qualify for the state meet.

"I don't want to stop him, because running, even though it hurts him, is kind of like his release and a time when he doesn't think about everything else," Sandy said. "It's hard to watch him run, because I'm always worried something else is going to happen. I guess I could be a mean parent and stop him, but during this whole time he's never quit."

Teammate Anthony Thomas, who figures to be contender for the state 3A title, says he will rely on Winn's example for inspiration.

"He doesn't need to be running, because every time he runs, he's putting himself in danger of his liver," Thomas said. "But he chooses to, because this is his way of dealing with it. Running is a sport he's loved since middle school. It just inspires you, that if you really want something, you go do it no matter what happens to you."

Tuesday's race is over, and Zacc is in tears. On a 1-10 scale, he says the pain reached nine, even 10 at times.

"I just had to finish it," Zacc says. "I'm disappointed with my time because I made a goal. From now on, I had to have every race under 20 minutes. That one is like four minutes off my best."